Chicken Coop


In a pretty drastic break from my normal sentimental, saccharine, overly whimsical indulgent attempts at poignancy, this piece was conceived to flex my more unused literary muscles. The idea is that a short novel would follow this prologue, though I'm not sure I have the stomach to sustain this sort of tone. I may come back to it in the future when I eventually shed the pansie boy whimsical aesthetic I still insulate myself with like so much baby fat.


Prologue

I turn from the sky
to check on my muddy boots
slung over a branch to dry
and wonder how long I've been lost
in this steamy autumn morning
gone for so many years.

I follow the dripping black of my bootlaces
to a dusty road winding back across farm plots
to the buried town of my past
the past I had promised myself to leave there.

The town innocently ripples with the new day's light
indifferent of my return.

I lay back against the cool grass
closing my eyes to the sun
sending blistering sparks of color
shivering like fireworks through my eyelids
and rushing me down into the old dirty bucket of my memories
mixing with some kind of run off
Mr. Peterson collects from his coop,
chicken shit mostly.

We laugh as his little gimp daughter falls against the sick hogs.
We help her fill the troughs with black apple cores and beet stems,
when really both of us want to fuck her stupid ass.
Beat out her retard screams
like we're butchering one of those diseased hogs.

We never say as much
we don’t have to
we get so bored out here we develop a sixth sense for each other.

Joey and I were spending summer break
digging ditches, sweeping up shavings at the mill, cleaning stables.
All the pettily shit people would rather pay a dime than have to bother with.
The important thing was we were earning money,
since Jenny McNeil started showing her tits down by the creek
and charging admission.

Jenny said she would strip down to her socks and bracelets
for a private showing Sunday after service
if Joey and I could come up with a dollar fifty between us.

Jenny goes to my big brother’s high school.
He says she’s a ripe slut. Even lets guys stick their hooks through her shitter.
He says her father must have done a number on her
and I don’t doubt it.
Everyone sees how he runs his big leathery mitts over her pig tails
wishing he could grab them like reigns
and fuck her puckered little mouth
if no one was awares.

But we are awares.
everyone is,
and never says a word.

This town is a sort of jail,
too familiar with itself,
ignorant of the world outside.
Like a coop of chickens shitting themselves,
shit that piles up
waiting for someone
to return with a bucket
and collect it.



Abstract:

A gaggle of dirt faced children clamoring around a rural farm town circa thirties dustbowl. They are unusually independent and mature for their age. (In selective areas, such as lack of squeamishness about sex, violence etc.) An unnerving surrealism permeates the town, closed in on itself, full of strained smiles, hurried whispers, and full churches.

The people are sad and pathetic, but without disgrace. The kids are taught to be “normal”, but can’t absorb teachings soaked in the hypocrisy of the adults. And instead learn to be distorted mirrors of them. The kids are sexual, nihilistic, ambivalent and brazen without shame.

Steeped in unrelenting boredom, they develop and nurture all kind of perverse thoughts and activities, kept just under the grownup’s radar. But keeping things just under radar is a theme of grownups, and the town in general, and all this unaddressed shit builds up to a future breaking point...